Ruth Simmons

Ruth Simmons (born Ruth Jean Stubblefield, July 3, 1945) is an American professor and academic administrator.

She earned her bachelor's degree, on scholarship, from Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1967.

She earned her master's and a doctorate in Romance literature from Harvard University in 1970 and 1973, respectively.

Simmons was an assistant professor of French at the University of New Orleans (UNO) from 1973 to 1976 and Assistant Dean of the UNO's College of Liberal Arts from 1975 to 1976.

She moved to California State University, Northridge in 1977, as administrative coordinator of its NEH Liberal Studies Project.

From 1978 to 1979, she was acting director of CSU-Northridge's International Programs and visiting associate professor of Pan-African Studies.

Simmons moved to the University of Southern California in 1979 as assistant dean of graduate studies and later as associate dean of graduate studies.

In 1983, she moved to Princeton University and served as assistant dean of faculty and then associate dean of faculty from 1986 to 1990.

Simmons served as provost at Spelman College from 1990 to 1991 and returned to Princeton as its vice provost from 1992 to 1995.

Before Brown University, she headed Smith College, one of the Seven Sisters and the largest women's college in the United States, beginning in 1995.

There, during her presidency, the first accredited program in engineering was started at an all-women's college.

In 1995, Simmons was selected as president of Smith College, which she led until 2001.

As president of Smith College, Simmons started the first engineering program at a U.S. woman's college.

In November 2000, Simmons became the first African American woman to head an Ivy League school, assuming the office in October 2001, succeeding Gordon Gee.

She also held appointments as a professor in the Departments of Comparative Literature and Africana Studies.

Simmons earned annual compensations of over $300,000 from Goldman Sachs (on top of her annual salary from Brown of over $500,000), while serving on the Goldman board of directors during the late-2000s financial crisis; in addition, she left the Goldman board (which she had joined in 2000) in 2009 with over $4.3 million in Goldman stock.

From 2001 to 2012, she served as the 18th president of Brown University, where she was the first African American president of an Ivy League institution.

While there, Simmons was named, best college president by Time magazine.

In 2002, Newsweek selected her as a Ms. Woman of the Year, while in 2001, Time named her as America's best college president.

At Brown, she completed a $1.4 billion initiative – the largest in Brown's history – known as Boldly Brown: The Campaign for Academic Enrichment to enhance Brown's academic programs.

In 2004, former Brown student Sidney E. Frank made the largest aggregate monetary contribution to Brown in its history in the amount of $120 million.

The Frank gifts were principally devoted to scholarship assistance to Brown students and Brown's programs in the sciences.

In 2006, during an orientation meeting with parents, Simmons denied interest in the presidency of Harvard University, headed at the time by interim president Derek Bok.

In 2007, philanthropist Warren Alpert made a similar contribution to strengthen the programs of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in the amount of $100 million.

Nevertheless, a 2007 New York Times article, featuring a photograph of Simmons, reported that the Harvard Corporation, responsible for selecting the university's replacement for former president Lawrence Summers, had been given a list of "potential candidates" that included her name.

In August 2007, Simmons was invited to deliver the 60th Annual Reading of the historic 1790 George Washington Letter to Touro Synagogue at the Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, in response to Moses Seixas on the subject of religious pluralism.

As reported in a May 22, 2009 press release, Brown Chancellor Thomas J. Tisch announced the early attainment of the $1.4 billion fundraising campaign and the continued pursuit of specific subsidiary goals in support of endowments for student scholarships of the Brown faculty and internationalization programs through the originally planned campaign to be continued through December 31, 2010.

According to a March 2009 poll by The Brown Daily Herald, Simmons had more than an 80% approval rating among Brown undergraduates.

In September 2011, Simmons announced that she would step down from her position as Brown President at the end of the 2011–12 academic year, initially saying she would remain at Brown as a professor of comparative literature and Africana studies.

She was succeeded as the Brown President on June 30, 2012, by Christina Paxson.

Simmons served as the eighth president of Prairie View A&M University, a HBCU, from 2017 until 2023.

A professor of literature in the Romance languages, in 2017, Simmons was called out of retirement to head Prairie View in her home state of Texas, where she increased scholarships and funding.

She stepped down as president there in 2023.

She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, an honorary fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor.

In February 2023, Simmons announced plans to advise Harvard University regarding relationships with historically black universities (HBCUs).

As of 2023, Simmons is also a President's Distinguished Fellow at Rice University.

Simmons was born in Grapeland, Texas, the last of 12 children of Fanny (née Campbell) and Isaac Stubblefield.

Her father was a sharecropper until the family moved to Houston during her school years.

Her paternal grandfather descends partly from the Benza and Kota people, enslaved people from Gabon, while her maternal line is traced back to the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean who were enslaved by the Spaniards.

While in school, one of her teachers,Vernell Lillie, talked to her about attending college, something she had never considered before.